Stir It Up

It’s a type of dance. It’s a figure skating move. It’s a game for PalmOS. But, more importantly for us, “swizzle” is a family of cocktails, and those cocktails are so named for the stick that’s used to stir them.

Yes, long before that tacky plastic stick showed up in your Mai Tai, bartenders in Martinique used twigs plucked from a species of tree native to the Caribbean to get their rum-based drinks nice and frosty. The authentic stick, also called a bois lele, is a dried woody stem with a whorl of branches at one end–and some hard core bartenders still use it. “The lele is the granddaddy,” says Brooklyn-based tiki enthusiast Adam Kolesar. “Nothing beats the original.”

Interesting point, coming from a man whose cocktail stirrer collection boasts about 100 wacky iterations. “These are what our mothers and fathers used as decorative pieces in highballs and other tall drinks–they’re a real throwback to the cocktail culture of the 60s and the 70s,” says Kolesar. He buys his objets for fun from estate sales–and we’ll show you his collection soon here on The Feed. But first, Kolesar schools us on the value of a real swizzle stick as opposed to your average stirrer.

When to Use It“Drinks are either stirred, shaken, or swizzled,” says Kolesar. “Never the three shall meet in terms of what’s proper.” So don’t get it twisted. You stir to chill and dilute the booze, but not add air. You shake to do all three of those things. Swizzling is unique in that the drink preparation calls for a tall, thin glass and then subtle agitation of the ingredients within that same glass, aerating the juices and combining them with the spirit(s). The method ensures a fast and even chill without disturbing the sunset-esque layers in that delicious Queen’s Park Swizzle, to use a classic example. The frosted finish you’ll get on the glass ain’t too shabby, either.

How to Use ItCan you pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time? Then you can swizzle. First, use the stick like you’re a cartoon caveman trying to start a fire. (What, you don’t often find yourself stranded in the wilderness in need of warmth?) Rotate the root structure in the drink by rubbing it in between your palms. Then simultaneously move the device up and down, working it from the top to the bottom of the drink. You’re swizzling! “It’s a beautifully theatric thing to be seen done properly,” says Kolesar. “It indicates an amount of care.”

Where to Get OneFor the real-deal lele, you can travel to the Caribbean. Or you can just go to cocktailkingdom.com and have one sent to your doorstep for $18. But we still vote for going to the Caribbean. –Julia Bainbridge